Last year, I worked at a small budget grocery store. A guy wanted three $500 prepaid Visa Gift Cards.
I immediately say, “Hold on, are you sure this isn’t an advanced fee scam?”
“No, no, they are for my personal use.”
THAT is the response that phone scammers TELL people to say if they are asked about why they are buying large denominations of cards.
There were two tills at this store: mine, and the manager’s. For some reason, the manager wasn’t allowed to sell that amount of gift cards on their OWN terminal. (Possibly an anti-theft measure?) But that meant that the $1500 of Visa Gift Cards HAD to be rung up on MY terminal.
But I didn’t feel good about this, so… I refused.
I asked the customer what they were for, if it wasn’t a scam. If he gives me an alternate reason, like “My three kids are all getting PS5s,” I would have done it. But he refuses to clarify and apparently can’t even make up a lie. When I refuse to budge, the man leaves…
I presume to talk to the scammer outside on his phone.
We call up the head manager and she says… well, we warned him, and that’s all we can do. I say that we could do a LITTLE more and refuse to participate in this folderol. Let him go somewhere else for his criminal activity.
The manager on the floor says that I have to do it, because she can’t do it on hers. She literally tries to push me out of the way of my terminal to do it, and I stand my ground as she tries to hip-push me, in what must have been a rather pathetic display.
She finally says, “you can do this, or you can leave.”
So I left.
After I cooled down a bit and got lunch, I call the head manager again and ask her… “Should I even come in tomorrow? It’s hard to hire people in December, so I AM willing to stay on. We can gamble on this not happening again.”
She decides that, nah, let’s just make a clean break. I say, possibly interrupting her as she waffles, “Alright, then. Lose this number,” and hang up on her.
It sucks that this guy got taken for a ride, but it ALSO sucks that I basically threw the job away for no gain and he still got taken for a ride. (It was a minimum-wage job during the pandemic. I wasn’t attached to it or anything.)
A younger co-worker at my other job didn’t understand why I did it. “They don’t pay me enough to be a hero.”
My response was, “No, they don’t pay me enough to be a villain.”
Conclusion
In a twist nobody saw coming, a seemingly ordinary day at work escalates into a dramatic showdown over ethics and employment. Discover how a quick-thinking employee’s decision leads to an unforgettable outcome and a life-changing choice.
Here’s how people reacted:
Your problem is you think so little of the customer.
Edit: I can’t possibly reply to everyone so I’ll add this:
My problem is as a general rule I don’t presume myself to be more intelligent than other people. I would inform them of how the scam works and inform a manager. But if I wanted to keep my job, the manager said to go ahead, and the person still wanted to buy the cards, I would let the customer buy the cards because I’m not assuming myself to be the smartest person in the room.
If I owned the store I still would not make it policy not to sell the cards, I would make it policy to inform customers and a manager and I would make information pamphlets outlining how the various scams work with websites and phone numbers for customers to refer to. Hell, if I was VISA, I would put that on the paper stock card the gift card comes with.
But at the end of the day, I don’t have a hero complex. I don’t think it’s my place to stop people from buying gift cards any more than it’s my place to stop people from smoking cigarettes or riding motorcycles or riding bikes without a helmet or eating too much fast food. I’d go as far as to say that if I have a friend in a relationship with someone that was emotionally abusive or financially scamming them, all I can do is inform them and try to convince them to leave but I don’t get to go and break them up. You can provide people with as much information as practical but at the end of the day, you are not in charge of them. This is Don Quixote behavior. The customer doesn’t *want* to be saved.
And then everyone clapped?
Edit to add OP is not an AH for trying to protect the customer. OP is an AH for deciding the customers answer wasn’t good enough, as if scams are the only reason gift cards are purchased. “personal use” is an extremely common term and it does not mean it was for a scam. It means it’s none of your business.
I worked service desk at Walmart for 3 years. When the scams with gift cards became more frequent, they made us print out questions to ask. If it’s over a certain amount, or if it’s multiple higher dollar gift cards.
Three $500 visa gift cards is a scam happening. If it wasn’t, he should’ve been able to answer simple questions and not give the exact wording the scammers tell him to use.
If we weren’t comfortable selling gift cards because we thought it was a scam, we called a manager and they did it under their numbers.
EDIT: y’all do not need to give awards for this! Thank you! I was really just giving a bit more background about the situation from someone who was trained for it.
Also really strange a manager wouldn’t be able to ring it up on her own till. She’s the manager. She should have more capabilities than a non manager.
3 gift cards is nbd, but that dollar amount screams red flag. There is actual training that people go through for cashiering that tells you to look out for stuff like this. I think at my place of employment, we had to get a manager involved if the dollar amount for gift cards exceeded $750. Granted, said manager has final say, but I know my managers okayed things that I didn’t feel good about a few times.
I wish I’d had the backbone to say I wasn’t willing to comply with some transactions, because even if I wasn’t the one making the decision, it would still weigh on me afterward that I participated in things that felt wrong to me.
And asking questions IS part of the job for large transactions that feel wrong. Cashiers. Are. Trained. To. Do. This.
So, people, if you ever feel like a cashier is giving you a hard time about what you’re trying to buy/return, don’t take it personally. They’re following their training procedures that are put in place by the company to minimize shrink.
Either that, or you’re a massive, flaming AH.
NTA for trying to stop and warn him. It looks like it was probably a scam. Like another commenter said, probably a better idea to ask if he’s willing to watch a youtube video detailing the scam before he buys the gift cards, or say it’s a common practice to prey on the gullible/elderly and steal much-needed funds.
Holding your grounds is a matter of your principles vs. your boss’. Your boss shrugged, said they were warned and you couldn’t know for sure it was a scam, then said it was out of her hands. If he’s not going to be convinced, he’s just going to take his business to the store down the street.
You personally don’t want to be a party to that? Fine. But you blocked your boss from processing the transaction. You got carried away.
This guy was dead-set on buying these cards. No matter your warnings, he was absolutely sure he wanted them. So just sigh and let the boss use your terminal. If someone won’t listen, they won’t listen.
Very soft YTA for getting carried away and causing a scene. I get why you did, but the guy still got himself scammed. Good job standing up for your principles. It is okay to quit/leave if your company is doing something you don’t like, such as ignoring obvious scams or the limits set on the terminals just to clear a purchase.
Both your boss and the man are presumably of sound mind and able body, so reaching out to control them wasn’t the greatest, but you had his best interests in mind.
The situation was shifty. You made a call based off of well-known red flags. You did the right thing.
It is really strange that a normal employee is allowed to sell this amount but not the manager.
Especially in cases like this an employee should have the option to decline and make their manager do this.
It was probably a scam. If you didn’t feel good about it, you did the right thing to not sell. If your employer couldn’t back your decision, you did the right thing to quit.
Was it a scam? Who knows. But I always tell folks to trust their gut.
Despite your good intentions you sound pretty rude to all your colleagues. ‘Possibly interrupting her as she waffles’? No need for that, either the interrupting or the description of her ‘waffling’. ‘Lose this number’, hanging up on your manager, ‘a pathetic display’.
It’s not actually your call whether or not to sell gift cards to this dude, whatever your intentions, and it seems like it’s your arrogance preventing you from seeing that and instead leading you to throw your job away rather than tolerate people not listening to you.
You didn’t have to quit after leaving. You could have had a conversation with the manager to actually address the issue of the scam.
Refusing to sell the guy the cards isn’t going to make a difference if he’s still convinced of the scam, so if you really wanted to help, you could have explained the scam to him rather than just declaring you know better and he can’t have them.
i appreciate your ethics, but i thimk you could work on your execution. It’s hard to actually change anything bad in the world from up on a high horse.
EDIT: The rule wasn’t ‘our manager said’ it was in the training and we all got refresher training about going into 4th quarter. In the US it was something that monitored by someone’s fraud department (I wanna say FBI but I don’t actually remember).
most retail places that sell gift cards mostly will ask elderly people that buy large amount in gift cards what they’re for now. since the scam has become common place alot more retailers are catching on and making policies on asking. I was in walmart last month an older man tried buying 800$ in GCs. The cashier and myself both questioned him and he wouldnt answer. she called over the cashier supervisor person and she said they do not allow GCs totalling a certain number anymore because of the scams. I think this walmart only allows up to 200$. Things change before it was yes let them spend whatever they want. because these scams became so problematic and common place policy does change to look after them. I guess having to tell so many elders that they cant return the money they just spent finally broke something inside them and go good for once..
Either way, you did your best to stop someone getting scammed at great personal cost. That makes you a good person.
And about people saying it’s none of your business. Shop workers should be asking questions about suspicious purchases like this. You’d wish they had if it was your mum or dad getting scammed out of their life savings.